LANGLIENA: UNA STORIA MACABRA

A young man recounts to an audio recorder his testimony of a shocking discovery. Driven by curiosity, he sneaked into an apparently abandoned cottage with doors mysteriously sealed by imposing padlocks, making a chilling discovery: among a sea of decomposing corpses and butcher tools lives a deformed creature that continuously demands food. What is that being? And who keeps it there, feeding it? By its very definition, a short film must succeed in communicating, entertaining, and captivating within a few minutes; in other words, it must use the language of synthesis to convey something to the viewer. Achieving this task is decidedly complicated, so much so that most successful short films are those that use as much time as possible to develop a story, while those that remain under ten minutes often play the card of narrative rarefaction to rather focus the viewer's interest on the technical aspect. This discourse applies to most current shorts of the Italian underground scene, sometimes valid business cards to showcase a director's technical skills but substantially irrelevant for a critical deepening (even retrospective) of the work's narrative content. Yet someone manages to stand out from the 'Good. And then?' group and demonstrates with very few minutes of footage that they understand both how to behave behind the camera and how to manage all the time available to tell a story that, for once, does not look to the usual Lynchian lesson. Emiliano Ranzani has succeeded, and with 'Langliena: A Macabre Story' he offers a perfect example of technical-narrative balance in a short film. The story told in 'Langliena' is not too complex; it does not aim for brainy reflections on human nature or the mechanisms of the psyche. Instead, it sets out to tell a novella of pure and genuine terror in a direct and effective manner. Setting aside unnecessary convolutions, the story immediately introduces us to a disturbing dimension where the everyday conceals unimaginable yet entirely tangible horrors. Human carcasses and repulsive creatures that, through the sense of sight, manage to incredibly generate suggestions of taste and smell: it is not difficult, in fact, observing the ghoul that twists among limbs and offal, to feel a rusty taste intensifying in the mouth and a sensation of intense stench that envelops us; one sense drags the others, and this is a synonym of total media capture, difficult to achieve with a work that lasts just 6 minutes. Here and there in Ranzani's work, it is possible to recognize a hint of Lovecraftian literature, especially in describing the shocking experience of a man who came into direct contact with the 'abyss,' with a macabre and (super)natural world made of pure and simple evil, stripped of any trite explanatory device. From a cinematic standpoint, however, it is possible to notice the influence of horrific Fulci, especially one of his most successful films, 'That House by the Cemetery,' evoked by the set designs and use of photography. The same monster, and the almost fatalistic mechanics that link it to the protagonist, somewhat retrace the need for 'sacrifices' of blood of Freudstein, but also of the Creeper, a creature hungry for human flesh in 'Jeepers Creepers.' In short, while suggesting derivative mechanisms, Ranzani creates a fascinating, unsettling, and excellently executed work, thanks also to the contribution of Mauro Regis to photography and Emanuele De Luca to makeup effects. Truly an excellent job! 'Ipse Dixit' "Emiliano Ranzani's Langliena is the creepiest, most disturbing short movie I have seen this year. It's a modern take on classic 1980s blood'n'guts Italian horror which evokes the spirit of Fulci and Lamberto Bava. Ranzani is a young talent to watch." Philip Nutman (screenwriter of 'The Girl Next Door') "Langliena is a lapidary gem of horror, exquisitely refined, perfectly cut and polished. It had me on the edge of my seat, nerves tingling, from beginning to end. Emiliano Ranzani is a fresh new talent" Douglas Preston (author of 'Relic') "Visually striking and conveying a sense of unease" Ramsey Campbell (horror novelist) "An impressive debut, Emiliano Ranzani is definitely someone to keep an eye on." Stuart Gordon (director of 'Re-animator' and 'Dagon') "a Lovecraft homage with bite" Richard Stanley (director of 'Hardware' and 'Demoniaca') "A finely crafted slice of dread" Ted Nicolaou (director of 'Terror Vision' and 'Subspecies - Vampiri')